The Mountain Goddess

by Shelley Elizabeth Schanfield

  “Where?” Dhara said in the Naga speech.

  At first she was afraid they were taking her to a hidden shrine to the Devi, where she would meet the same fate as Yajna’s daughter. After all, they gave human offerings to the Great Mother, too, but Heshu told Dhara that they would never sacrifice an innocent like that. “Enemies or tribesmen who do wrong, we offer,” he had said. “Not women who bear child, like Mahaprabhu, the Great Mother, bore us.”

  “Not long,” Heshu answered. “Till sun look down from there.” He pointed straight up.

  The sun had yet to color the eastern sky—not that they could have seen its rise in this almost impenetrable mass of vines and dead trees.

  “Are they just going to leave us here?” Rohit asked irritably, waving his hand at a cloud of gnats. “Do you see what they’re talking about?”

  Suddenly she did, a place where the thick growth thinned just a bit. “Yes, I do,” she said, and turned to say goodbye to Heshu and his three companions, but they had already melted into the forest.

  There was nothing to do but follow the path. They walked for hours as the sun passed its zenith, and they snapped at each other, thinking they were lost. Then suddenly the trees thinned. They emerged from the forest onto the Terai, just as the Naga promised. A few bare trees drowned by swampy water cast long afternoon shadows. The air was heavy with the smell of decaying plants, and masses of tall reeds rose from the turgid muck. On the other side were the Himalayan foothills. The snowy peaks beyond beckoned, and a sudden longing for the clear air and lapis sky of her home pierced her.

  “Now I know where I am,” Rohit said. “Keep the foothills on our right, and we’ll get to the Uttarapatha.”

  “How do you know?”

  “In my days of solitary seeking I went this way. I was trying to find my own cave on a mountain.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I found something else.”

  “What?”

  “The knowledge that in this lifetime, at least, I won’t be a solitary sage.” A smile touched his lips. “This road skirts the swamp until it hits a spur of the Uttarapatha. You can go west, back to Kapilavastu. I don’t advise going east, which is pretty much back into Angulimala’s hands. Or you can head up there.” He pointed to a road leading into the foothills. “That leads to Dhavalagiri.”

  She had a choice. She didn’t have to go back to Kapilavastu. She could return to Dhavalagiri. If she sent for Siddhartha, he would follow. This was what he wanted, a hermitage for the two of them.

  A future in Dhavalagiri’s cave. She would be brave, wise, virtuous. She would perform heroic ascetic feats, uncover astonishing insights, and word of her powerful blessings would travel to all the Sixteen Clans and beyond. The village of her birth, nestled in the mountain goddess’s shadow, would prosper as pilgrims came from everywhere to see the great yogi Dhara. Her heart seemed to leap northward toward Himalaya’s snow-capped kingdom.

  That was what Siddhartha would want.

  What did she want?

  She shaded her eyes and looked west, toward Kapilavastu. If she returned, she could be Princess Yasodhara the beautiful and good, lead her armies to victory, rule a vast empire that her grandmother had hardly dared dream of, become the object of her enemies’ fear and her followers’ adoration.

  Perhaps even Chandaka’s adoration.

  The prospect was as dizzying as flying like an eagle. The moment that thought occurred to her, she knew her own skills had returned. Angulimala no longer controlled her. She could pick up and fly, if she wanted, but she’d seen what using those powers could do to a person.

  A flock of white cranes rose and circled.

  The direction they fly, there I will go.

  The mass of birds wheeled and headed into the setting sun.

  She would go west. Walking. Back to Kapilavastu.

  Jai Ma

  Fires flickered among the trees and along the dirt road. They fought a futile battle with the shadows that retreated when someone tossed in more fuel but advanced again as the fires died down again. As Angulimala wandered among her outlaws, they saluted her.

  “Jai, Ma! Victory to the Mother!”

  Their faces shone with sweat, and the play of dark and light distorted them so that it was hard to tell whether they bore fierce grins or looks of terror. It was always this way after a sacrifice to the Mother.

  The riotous celebration had gone on for two days. The vultures had not yet fully consumed the sacrifice. The eviscerated corpse of Yajna’s daughter hung from the tree that was caked with the blood of many sacrifices.

  “Jai, Ma! Jai, Mahaprabhu!” Raucous laughter, shouts, and the occasional scream rose to the night sky. The encampment was redolent with the smell of sacrificed deer, boar, and pheasants cooking, which could not quite mask the stink of too many filthy, savage men and women living too close together. Her filthy, savage men and women. Angulimala acknowledged the salutes with a faint smile and a nod. They loved and feared her.

  She walked past the last of the cooking pits and the din receded. By her longhouse, someone had lit a cook fire and gutted a deer. A few men sitting around it rose and bowed as she walked past them without a word. One of them separated from the others and followed her. The rest scurried away into the night, leaving them alone.

  She stopped at the steps and looked back toward the tree and the sacrifice hanging from it. The familiar red aura pulsed at the edge of her vision. Her head pounded.

  “Well, Mahisa?” she said.

  “Mother Incarnate.” Mahisa faced her. “We found no trace of them. Either the Nagas guided them, or they became lost. If they’re lost, no one survives long in the forest.”

  “But you did not bring them back here.”

  “I have failed you, my goddess. My life is yours.” He drew a long knife from the leather scabbard at his belt and handed it to her.

  “You give up your life very easily. And for nothing. I intended for them to escape.”

  Mahisa raised his scarred face. “You could have told me, my dark one. I thought you said she had great powers. That together you could conquer the world.”

  “I have powers enough without her.”

  Mahisa planted his sword and leaned on it, heaving his muscled bulk up with a grunt. “Why did you send us to find her? I don’t understand. Why did you bring her here at all?”

  He was one of her fiercest warriors and had lost an eye serving her. The other bulged, giving him a demonic air. Hence the name Mahisa: the demon the warrior goddess conquered. The Dark Mother’s worshippers believed that long ago, when she took Durga’s form, she made Mahisa her consort. But they were wrong in their belief about the goddess and the demon. The tigress Rani had served Durga in that fight and had seen the many-armed goddess slay the monster, and told Mala the tale.

  As for Angulimala and Mahisa, though, everyone knew this hideous man was her lover. He satisfied her well enough but had taken to thinking too highly of himself as her consort. As if there was even the tiniest danger that she would become attached to the vicious brute. It was tiresome. Perhaps it was his time to die.

  “I brought her here to free myself.”

  His brow wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”

  “You do not need to understand.” The encampment receded. “Come, Mahisa.” They stepped inside the empty longhouse.

  Inside, he came up behind her and seized her with one powerful arm. With the other he held his knife to her throat. “To the bed, my dark one.” He pushed her face down and put his full weight on her, sheathing his knife as he shifted, straddling her back and pinning her arms with his knees. To struggle was joy. Trembling surrender flowed through her as he picked up one of the leather strips looped around a bedpost and tied her hands together. Then he rolled her onto her back and slapped her hard.

  “No one knows how to please you like Mahisa,” he
said. His face was full of lust. “Beg for it, my dark one.”

  The aura pulsed faster.

  Angulimala stared into the dark until the small enchantment took hold and Mahisa fell asleep beside her, his ugly face sated and peaceful, almost handsome in its way. She tensed her arms and the leather strips broke with a snap. She rubbed her wrists. It was her turn to bind him.

  When she had finished tying his hands in front of him far more securely than he had tied hers, she lifted the enchantment enough for him to be able to get up and walk. He opened a groggy eye. In a second, he knew he was bound. He gasped, half lifted off the bed and fell back with full-blown fear on his face, but he mastered it, did not cry out.

  Angulimala admired that. She helped him up.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a small voice.

  “I am preparing you for sacrifice.”

  “Oh, my dark one.” He swallowed. “So it is true. This is the price of being your lover.”

  “It is the price of immortality.”

  “It will make me immortal?”

  She laughed. “No. It is the price of my immortality. I will sacrifice you and burn your body. Your ashes will make me immortal.”

  “This—this the priestess has told you?”

  “This the goddess told me in a dream. To make a sacrifice at a place not even Lila knows. To burn the offering and rub my body with the ashes.”

  “But you have sacrificed many lovers, so they say.”

  “None has gone willingly.”

  Mahisa straightened. “I—I am yours to command.”

  Could he be the one? She had seen other lovers whimper, crouch at her feet and kiss them, beg for their lives, though they had known when they came to her bed that a man does not take the Mother, but She takes him. Would Mahisa be brave when they reached the ancient linga?

  “Come.” She tied a rope around his neck. The enchantment made him docile as a drugged ox being led to the eagle altar. Pity the Brahmins. They only knew how to make offerings to bend the gods to their will. Angulimala’s offering would make her a goddess.

  In silence and unnoticed, they left the encampment by a path Angulimala had traveled long ago. She had made her army’s camp in this part of the forest because it was close to this path and the shrine it led to, but no one, not even Lila, knew about that shrine. She’d found it years ago, when she was on the verge of womanhood. That day she had been trying to escape from Gauri, the village where she lived in virtual slavery after her parents’ death. She’d stumbled on the ancient shrine, and the Mother appeared to her in the splendid avatar of Durga, gave her the strength to endure, a refuge from her suffering. When she had at last found the courage to escape, the path led her to freedom.

  That was another lifetime. It had taken her years to be able to remember that lifetime without visceral pain, to transform that weak and helpless girl into who she was now.

  Angulimala and Mahisa soon reached the little grove with its stone linga that was put there generations ago by the ancient forest dwellers. The ghosts of those sacrificed were watching. She would not make a mistake in the rite. She led him to the linga and pushed him onto the dark earth. “I will lift the enchantment now, Mahisa. Will you be brave?”

  There was fear, but Mahisa made no plea for mercy. He held out his hands for her to untie. “I am a warrior. There’s no need to bind me. I won’t try to escape. I have served you and loved you, Angulimala.” His voice cracked. “It is my karma to be your offering.”

  “You offer your flesh willingly. This will please the Mother. You will have a fortunate rebirth.”

  “I hope I will be more handsome in my next life.” Mahisa’s ugly face twisted into a smile. They laughed together. He settled his back against the linga and crossed his legs like a yogi.

  For a moment, she saw Asita sitting there. Her old guru had taught her that liberation meant transcending reality, freeing oneself from the web of existence. He was right about one thing: One had to be free.

  “There is one thing, Dark One. You said you brought the princess in order to free yourself. This I do not understand.”

  “Because she loved the woman I once was. Her love bound me. I had to destroy that love.” As she had destroyed Kirsa’s, whose hold on her was deeper than Dhara’s.

  She had to be free.

  Her aura flashed as bright as a red sun. She seized Mahisa’s hair and slashed the knife across his throat. Sweet-scented blood spurted and pooled dark around the body.

  The aura faded. She wiped sticky blood from her hands on the soft hide wrapped around her loins.

  She took his body to a pyre she had prepared in the way her lover Angirasa had taught her when she lived with him at the cremation grounds. In those days, she had never envisioned how useful that skill would be. The fire burned hot and fast, but it was near dawn when it was down to embers. She scattered them with a stick until all had cooled, and rubbed the still-warm ashes all over her body.

  Angulimala sat in the lotus pose to wait. Sparks shimmered around her. She couldn’t still her nerves. She was sure it would not be dark Kali, or the warrior goddess Durga, or wealth-bestowing Lakshmi, or the goddess of wisdom Saraswati that would appear to bestow immortality upon her. They were but pale avatars of the Great Mother. It must be She who would come. Angulimala would look on the face of the Great Goddess, Mahaprabhu, the Devi. The Formless One would take form.

  How long she sat, Anguilmala didn’t know. She waited and waited, but nothing appeared. The day passed. Anticipation faded into a stupor into crushing reality. Her offering had not pleased the goddess.

  She waited until nightfall to head back to the camp. In wretched despair she walked through the forest, oblivious to its sounds, thinking of Mahisa’s sacrifice, wondering what she had done wrong.

  Finally, she came to the camp. The revelry had died down. On either side of the dirt road, a few fires burned low. Revelers were scattered about like rag dolls, naked limbs askew, sleeping. Only snores broke the stillness.

  She halted. The scene revolted her. How had she come to this? She had tried to break all bonds, to make those who loved her hate her, to free herself from all constraints.

  She had failed. For though she had destroyed Kirsa’s and Dhara’s and Nalaka’s and Rohit’s love, she was still bound.

  Because she had not destroyed her love for them.

  Part IV

  Four years later

  Mohini’s shrine

  The filmy curtains floated on an afternoon breeze. Chandaka yawned and stretched as the fine gauze blew over Ratna’s low couch and caressed their naked bodies. The warm air carried the fountain’s splash and the scent of exotic flowers from her garden into the room.

  “I’ve bored you,” the courtesan said. She was lying at his side, her leg twined over one of his, her head resting on his chest.

  With one finger he tilted her chin up and kissed her. “Never. But you’ve worn me out.”

  “Tut.” She waggled a finger. “Only twice and you’re tired? My dear Chandaka, we used to play these games for hours.”

  “Back when I was sixteen. Now I’m twenty-six—”

  “Shhh.” She covered his mouth with the palm of her hand. “One doesn’t remind a courtesan of the passage of years.”

  “For you, time seems to stand still.” He rolled so their positions were changed and he was half on top of her with one leg between hers, supporting his head with one hand. He looked her up and down. It was easy to believe that her mother was an exquisite nymph who fell in love with Ratna’s father, the wise and beloved hermit Katha. “What yoga did old Katha teach you, to keep you looking eighteen?”

  Ratna laughed and put her arms around his neck. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Have I ever?”

  “Back in Varanasi, you stole sweets from me all the time.”

  “That’s not
lying. It’s stealing.” He remembered the honeyed cakes, as he remembered the day the sage Asita had brought the beautiful girl with startling grey eyes in a dark face to Addhakashi’s mansion in Varanasi. He was just five at the time, the coddled son of Amrapali, Addha’s most beautiful apprentice.

  “True. But as to how I stay young, dear Chandaka, my mother was a celestial nymph.”

  “I know. She couldn’t resist old Katha’s spiritual heat. It’s a story as old as the forests that line Ganga’s banks, an apsaras falling in love with a wise hermit. I’ve often thought I should find a hermitage and try my own luck at capturing a nymph’s heart. I’m better-looking than most of the rishis and yogis I’ve ever met.”

  “You seem to do well enough with mortal women. Besides, it’s as true these days as it was generations ago that the nymph disappears as soon as she gives her lover a child. Most often leaving the child with the father, as my mother did.”

  Not once in all the time he’d known Ratna had she ever mentioned her mother. “You never talk about her.”

  “What is there to say? I was just a baby when she left. You know how good and kind my father was. He doted on me. In many ways I was a lucky little girl, running free in the forest, watched over by tree spirits.”

  She had told him something about her childhood. The beloved old Brahmin Katha raised her at his ashram deep in the Forest of Bliss, home to the god Shiva and his blue goddess. When he died, his friend Asita took her in, fearing for the lovely girl’s safety. Katha had educated her in sacred sciences, and her intelligence impressed her guardian. “A girl with your beauty and brains must be a courtesan,” Asita had told her. “Even a wandering rishiki or the most powerful queen does not have as much freedom.”

  That was how she came to Addha’s mansion in Varanasi, where Ratna and Chandaka became friends. When Addha fled Varanasi for Kapilavastu, Ratna came with her. She made a name for herself, and rumor said she’d made a fortune, too, off her two rich patrons and cheerful rivals, the merchants Bhallika and Trapusha.